The Scent of Blood
by WarpedTenchu
Summary: AU. A blood thirsty killing prodigy finds Naruto after being beaten by one of the numerous groups of villages whom had taken it upon themselves to rid the village of 'evil'. She decides to take him under her wing for her own unknown reasons. On HIATUS
1. Chapter 1 Edited

Hello! This is Tenchu with the edited version of Chapter One... I wan't happy with the way the story was heading so I'm redoing it. This isn't much different from the first original, but the changes are subtle at first, but they'll get more noticable later on, so please re-read the chapter! :) It should show by Chapter three or four. Please leave a comment :)

Disclaimer: The great Masashi Kishimoto owns Naruto

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_She smelt blood._

The sweet, intoxicating scent of blood that cocooned her in a blissful mist. Quietly, stealthily she walked closer to the source. She stopped, noticed a darker undercurrent of power that faintly resonated from the blood. She hastened her stride. Turned left, right, left, left, right and arrived at in a dimly lit alley way. It was a bunch of drunken villagers, who had found a poor soul to torment. Probably an animal, not what she was looking for. She was looking for a more powerful being that was in all probability also very large. She turned and walked a couple of steps out of the alley way.

_Strange._ The aroma was getting weaker. She spun on her heel and a veil of long wispy silver hair followed behind. She walked closer to the group, grabbed a raggedly black-clad man who reeked of alcohol by the back of the collar and tugged, forcefully. As a result, an interesting shape was imprinted on the wall and an unconscious blob of human filth slid down the wall. The loud crashing sound drew the attention of the rest of the rowdy crowd and they turned towards her. _Odd, they are not all drunk_ she though as her sensitive mind picked out the various layers of consciousness.

Three drunk, five sober. Why? Even her ultra-fast processing brain didn't have enough time to think up logical solutions before a drunk, tethering on the edge of soberness executed a sloppy, but well supported punch that came into contact with the side of her face. Her petite frame was inevitably thrown onto the floor. _Stupid drunk ninja. _She slowly wiped the blood trickling from her face and smirked. _She was getting excited and she prayed that this wasn't going to be boring. _With in five seconds, the two remaining drunkards crumbled to the floor. She had hit the central nerve points. Tomorrow, they would wake up with a killer headache, which would have been expected from such heavy drinking, but they would never recall her, because she had attacked a point very close to what she had dubbed the 'hallucination point' and they would spend the night and the better half of tomorrow unconscious and dreaming of a vague silver and black figure. Of course, when they woke, the mental effort to recall her while they were in 'dreamscape' would have been exhausted.

However, she couldn't do the same to the _sober _ninja, because she couldn't cover up the headache that would come about from her using the 'hallucination point' without them asking questions tomorrow. _Baka sober ninja._ While she was mentally cursing them in her head, they had began staring at her with glaring eyes and talking in angry tones.

"How dare you? We are Konoha shinobi and we cannot let you interfere with our mission!"

Stupid red clad ninja. The red _hurt_ damn it! Couldn't he wear a more eye-pleasing color? Blue maybe, like the one his _sane_ friend was wearing?

"Damn you, TALK!" That snapped her at of her reverie, which involved her tying him to a very highly situated light post and placing bird seed around him. With the amount of bird crap that was going to accumulate on the red clothing, it would become much less of and eyesore. _Too bad it's not possible._ That was true. She had planned an inconspicuous holiday to a _green_ colored village. _Green_, a nice, soothing color that didn't burn her delicate eyes.

She focused her unnerving pair of yellow and blue eyes at the talker. _Baka Konoha shinobi for ruining my holiday!_ Her eyes searched his face; apparently her not talking was a problem for him. _Serves him right._ She smiled; nicely. Only from the perspective of someone other than herself, it would have been classified as_ downright creepy_. The eye-sore of a ninja took out a kunai and threw it at her head, which of course, forced her to duck. While ducking, she noticed a pile of boxes. Boxes that could be knocked into _pieces_. _Pieces _that could potentially bury the dim-witted, angry, red ninja. A cheeky grin plastered itself on her face as a plan formulated itself in her mind.

She ran towards him and while he braced for the impact, she vaulted over him and landed neatly behind him. _Perfect._ With a faultless kick, she sent him flying into the wooden boxes, which consequently shattered and _thankfully_ covered the hideous red yakuta that the man was wearing. She spent a while admiring and evaluating her handy work. _Tch._ She had been off by a couple of centimeters, because she could still she a sleeve of that stupid _red_ yakuta. She didn't brood for too long over the error however, as time didn't allow her to. Or rather fate didn't allow her to, because the remaining four had decided she was an opponent that could be easily defeated with their combined efforts.

…_Baka Konoha shinobi…_

With little planning on her part and relying on the predictability of each move, the four joined their stupid red friend in the pile of rubble. After spending a bit of time admiring her handy work, she heard a faint sound. Labored breathing and quiet whimpers of pain. And then she remembered _the blood_ and the original objective of this night-time stroll_._ She looked over to where the men had been standing and saw a pool of blood. A pool of beautiful red blood and rising from its centre a crown of gold hair and a pair of unseeing, electric blue eyes.

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I hope you guys like! :) Reviews are greatly appreciated and are a cause for longer and better chapters!


	2. Chapter 2 Edited

This is almost exactly the same as the normal

Disclaimer for the whole story: Masashi Kishimoto owns Naruto, Kira Kyuuketsuki is mine!

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The Scent of Blood Chapter 2

She stopped momentarily and was enthralled by the beauty of the scene. The boy's body lay in eagle-spread in a pool of glimmering blood. She hated red, but she loved _blood._ The boy made a small noise that sounded like a whisper. Was he trying to say something? Unperturbed by the mass of blood she sank her knees gracefully onto the ground and tried to hear.

"_Help"_ -it was a bare whisper.

She froze and somewhere with in the depths of her mind, she heard a scream. It was coming from the foggy corner in her mind. It was a 'hazy' place that housed forgotten memories, a place that was surrounded by a wall of impenetrable mist. She was trying to reach something and that something was screaming. _Who was it? What was it?_ She tried to push herself through the mist. At first it was similar to walking normally, but then walking became difficult, as if she was passing through taffy, in the end she hit a solid, opaque wall. She considered stopping for a bit, but then she heard that voice again. "_Help"_ She couldn't begin to comprehend what was tugging at her heart strings. Hundreds of people had _screamed_ help in front of her and she could not remember batting an eyelash. "_Help" _The voice pulled again and she lurched into the wall. The misty wall responded by electrocuting her and throwing her out of its boundaries with such force that she felt a broken rib. _Cold _blood trickled out. She stared at the blood. _Cold blood?_ Last time she checked, humans were _warm-blooded_ creatures and this body was human. Her mind didn't ponder on it very long because a louder "_Help"_ jolted her out of the 'dreamscape'.

She came back to reality. She examined her ribs and they were fine. It was the _boy's_ blood was on her hand and it was _cold._ Which, meant he was dying. _Dying_. Normally she would never have bothered to save a pathetic little boy, but something in her mind was firmly set on the fact that _this_ boy was the key to the locked place in the abyss, she was also currently 34 percent sure that this boy was also the origin of the source of power she was looking for. However most importantly, _he_ was the door to complete re-control over her entire brain capacity. _He must not die_. That was the conclusion she reached and she acted on it; quickly. Abruptly, she stood up, with the boy in her arms. Her arms supporting his head and legs. She ran out of the alleyway and stopped; hastily. _Where did people do when they were hurt anyway?_ It had been so long since she had been in one of those…_h….h? _Great, she was getting really far today. _H…hos…hospital!_ She proceeded to jump on the roof and head in the general northern direction, until she came to a screeching halt. _Where's the hospital?_

_Shit__…_……………

She couldn't remember anything about hospitals, or where they normally were or anything about them what so ever. The body she was currently used hadn't been admitted into a hospital since she was born. The hazy place released a picture from its great Blackwood doors (that she never bothered to try, because the misty walls looked more easily accessible). A red cross. _A red cross_. What was the significance of that? Her mind gave her no answer, but she had the gut instinct that this was what she was looking for. That gut instinct was very similar to the feeling that 'tugging of the heart strings' that had forced her to pick up the boy in the first place. Leaping onto a taller building near by, she scanned to dark horizon for a glowing red cross. An average human wouldn't have been able to see much in the blackness of the night, but she wasn't normal.

By vigorously tilting her head back, she slipped her contact out of place and revealed her yellow left eye. Now she could see _everything_ that was there for miles. She saw a rat scavenging for food three alleyways away, a vulture carrying a piece of carrion and a glowing red cross behind what looked like a dead dog. She sprinted towards to sign and landed in front of the main doors. She look at the door and then at the boy and then, at the lack of available hands. She chose to push open the door with her back.

"Oh my, are you alright?" cried the nurse at the front desk.

_Well,_ that was quick; only her blood soaked back had entered the building so far. She stopped briefly to grimace at the horrid pink uniform before entering the building and presenting the boy to the nurse. She noticed an odd movement of the nurse's facial muscles; a strained smile was the result.

"Oh, well, put the boy in on of the rooms and a doctor will be with him shortly" the nurse said after seconds of strained smiling; as if to prove she was concerned about the child. _Which was strange._ Normally you would drag a doctor out of bed of injuries this bad on a child, but who was she to question? She had long forgotten any healing skills or for that matter anything about basic medicine. _It had been a really long time, hadn't it?_

She followed the hideously colored nurse to room 115 and laid the boy down on the bed.

"You don't have to stay. That _boy_ doesn't have family, he'll be just _fine alone_" the nurse emphasized the last part and she had a feeling that this nurse felt like this boy, who couldn't have been more than five or seven, some how deserved to live in isolation and barred from normal human relations.

The silver-haired and currently odd eyed woman asked for the nearest bathroom. The nurse pointed at the door adjoining the room. It took the woman and the nurse the same time to reach to different doors; the bathroom and room door respectively.

"I think I'll stay" she added her smile to that sentence and sent the nurse scampering out into the hallway. She paused to frown. _Was her smile scary?_ She hard tried for hours in front of a mirror to get it to parallel some celebrity models that she had seen on a magazine. She shook her head and went to cleanse herself of blood. Thank Kami-sama there was a shower too, and that she had sealed a spare change of clothing into a scroll.

She indulged herself in a long hot shower and then proceeded to sit in the chair beside the boy. The night had been long and confusing; emotionally. And just before she gave into the bliss of sleep, her exerted mind could only be sure of one thing that was good tonight.

_The shower was really nice………………….._

Nice reading!


	3. Chapter 3 Edited changes start here

Hello peoples! Chapter Three is here and its improved and needs to be re-read because the story plot alterations start in this chapter. :P

I'd really like readers to review too, cause feedback is very rewarding after spending a night typing on the floor and killing my undeserving back. T-T

Disclaimer: Kira and the plot belongs to moi, the rest as you know it belongs to Masashi Kishimoto

The Scent of Blood Chapter Three

While the heads of silver and gold were sleeping in the hospital, the Hokage was frantically rushing to the hospital with an ANBU medic nin that he had just dragged out of bed

While the heads of silver and gold were sleeping in the hospital, the Hokage was frantically rushing to the hospital with an ANBU medic nin that he had just dragged out of bed. This nin he had specifically chosen because this nin, Codename: _Kangohei_ （'medic' in Japanese） because this nin had just returned from a long-term mission, but still had at least half of his chakra reserves left. With Kangohei this mentally exhausted, he wouldn't really notice exactly who he was performing the healing on and if he did, his wouldn't be able to process all the other messy emotions involved with this _particular_ little boy.

The Hokage and ANBU entered through the front door, although the Hokage had briefly had considered using a window, and rushed to room 115 after rudely demanding the little boy's room number from the nurse who was just about to fall asleep on the front desk. He really wished he could employ more _compassionate_ staff at the hospital, but no matter how sympathetic the nurses he employed were, they could not get over the incorrect fact that 'innocent little blond boy nine tailed kitsune demon'. The Hokage sighed. _Look how your village shuns your little baby boy. Minato, do you still believe what you did was right?_ The Hokage dragged the half-asleep nin into room 115 and told him to patch the boy up. With what the Hokage had seen with his crystal ball, there would have _should have _been many deep cuts and bruises, but there was nothing but a couple of minor cuts and a few healing broken ribs, which the ANBU took care of by bandaging the sleeping boy's chest. Kyuubi's healing powers were indeed a miracle and the Hokage was grateful for them, because if Kyuubi did not want to heal his host, little Naruto would have died and been resuscitated too many times to count.

When the Hokage had entered the room, he had focused his eyes on the boy and nothing but the boy, but now his mind relaxed, knowing the boy was safe, and as his eyes began focusing on the entire picture, which was when he realised with a start that there was a long, white haired person sleeping on a chair in the corner. Just before his mind reeled into action in order to analyse who this person was, the medic nin yawned and asked to leave. The Hokage replied with a dismissing wave. As the medic nin left, the woman, who had been feigning sleep ever since she had heard people walk within three metres of the door, slowly opened her blue, right eye to stare from the shadows of the room's corner right at the Hokage.

_Fear, overwhelming fear was what coursed through the old man._

That piercing electric blue eye was staring at him, and as absurd as it sounds, he felt like it was peering into his mind. This was true. She was looking into his mind. Like the Hokage had no idea who she was, she had no idea who he was. When she came to a realisation of whom the man standing in front of her was, a voice in her mind began laughing at her. _He he, look! I've found an idiot who doesn't even know who rules the village she is currently visiting!_ With quick sudden movements that startled the Hokage, she smoothed out her hair, straightened her clothes until she looked presentable and then offered her right hand for the Hokage to shake. The Hokage who was still in shock of the abrupt movements and the now open yellow left eye, slowly offered his right hand to shake.

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Everything hurt, well, should have hurt, but he knew that nothing actually would. The temporary pain he currently felt was just his brain's expectant reaction. Life was normal he had landed himself in hospital, again, for the umpteenth time for no other reason than being alive or walking down a _public_ street. He sighed, stopped abruptly and stared at the pool of silver lying beside him. The _woman,_ unless it was a man who had such long hair, was currently sleeping with her head resting on the side of his bed. Who was she? He could vaguely remember himself asking for help last night from someone, who from his fuzzy vision last night, appeared to have an angelic glow. He had believed it was a dream (and that one of the Hokage's ANBU had once again unwilling helped him out), apparently not. He was very hesitant, but he really wanted to verify if she was real. If she was real, and not another figment of his overactive imagination that helped him get through the every hour of the day. Like his friend Kyuubi, the voice inside his head who insisted it was a separate entity.

His hand made contact with a wisp of silver hair, but he withdrew hastily as the figure stirred. She starred at him with one unblinking yellow eye. _Beautiful, _he thought. It reminded him of the sun. The glow of warm light that always shone down on him and that always looked as if it was smiling. When she realised that the little boy hadn't flinched at her 'scary' eye, she opened up her blue right eye and gave him a large smile. To the boy, who had known no other smile besides the Hokage's crooked smile, did not view it as scary, but a genuine smile that rivalled any celebrity models'. He offered a large grin in return.

She stretched and yawned and he winced as she cracked the bones in her back. When that was all done, she offered her right hand and said:

"Watashi wa **Kyuuketsuki Kira** desu! Yoroshiku!" she was still smiling brightly at this stage, being pleased at finally finding someone who did not react 'badly' to her _practised_ smile.

"Boku wa Uzumaki Naruto desu." He said quietly, unable to match her cheeriness.

"Does this make us friends yet? 'Cause I've never had friends before and I read in a book somewhere that that's how friends meet!" She rambled on about completely irrelevant things like the book she read it in, the page number, the exact line, the exact time of day she read it and even the _year_, which meant she had read it quite awhile ago. The poor little boy couldn't possibly comprehend how someone could fit so much information in their heads; her rambling was also making him feel rather inadequate, as he could barely remember what day it was _today_.

They lapsed into a comfortable silence after Kira's long winded explanation of quote references came down to a dwindling end. The two simultaneously sighed and turned their heads to look out at the rising sun. It was Naruto who quietly began to gather up his courage and asked if his newly acquired companion wanted a guided tour of Konoha. Her giant _vampiric_ smile graced her face and its '_warmth_' began destroying the webs of doubt that this person wanted him to come to any harm. She gave him a hand and helped him down from the lumpy hospital and handed him the change of clothes that the Hokage had bought with him. With each step (or in Naruto's case; skip) that took them out the hospital doors, the little boy's face became brighter and brighter.

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They had spent the entire day running from one end of Konoha to the other and back again. Being just a child, Naruto was not very good at strategically planning things out; he basically thought of a place and went there instead of mapping a route that would take them around the town in order. Kira swore that they had run down the same street at least five times, each time to go to a different destination in the opposite direction. The confusion of walking the same roads numerous times also took a toll on Naruto as they had wound up lost twice and discovered interesting little places that even Naruto (a resident of Konoha) had never seen before. After both Naruto's incredible energy reserve and hers had been exhausted, they tiredly trudged to Naruto's shabby, little apartment on the top floor. She saw him to the door and while she was walking away from the apartment complex back to her room at the nearby inn, Naruto's loud, boisterous voice resonated through the lower part of Konoha.

"Sayonara Kyuuketsuki nee-chan!" She waved back and turned around before she grimaced. _How many times did she have to tell the little runt to call her Kira?_ The trip back to her temporary room at the inn felt a little different from the rest. Was it because she suddenly felt a little lighter? Or was it because she was smiling and walking at the same time and compelling the crowd in front of her to part much like the Red Sea did for Moses. When she arrived in her room, she shut the door and placed herself rather ungracefully on a chair, lent her feet on the table and lit a cigarette. She smiled at the memory of little Naruto shyly requesting a chocolate ice-cream after her persistence in insisting that he choose his own flavour. She had frankly exhausted all her persuading techniques. After that, Naruto opened up a lot more; he became a lot chattier, which was good, since she had worn out her index of conversation topics. She gave herself a mental note to read some more basic human 'how-to' social interaction books. Today had been good, but her pounding head was telling her tonight was not going to be so easy.

At first, she thought it was just better to attempt to go to sleep. That didn't work. After hours of tossing and turning about on the bed, she threw off the bed covers; never mind that it was currently freezing, and proceeded to open a window. The cold air didn't help either. The adrenaline coursing through her system was now becoming impossible to handle. Her head began to furiously pound. _Shit. Not now._ She couldn't afford to go into one of her 'little' fits and kill a bunch of pathetic mortals. Not with her current human body breaking down like this. Her arm, she noticed had finally decided to show crack marks, which was not good. The body had hours at the most until it gave out and turned into fine dust particles. The body 'turning into ash' part wasn't good, because it meant that her soul would be trapped in the mortal world, at the mercy of the wind, being blown all across the god forsaken globe. She needed to find that blasted tailed demon; _now._ If she wanted to enjoy her 'eternity' and not become one of the countless souls trapped by the winds, she needed to repair the body and recode it. She needed Kyuubi.

_Translations:_

Watashi wa **Kyuuketsuki Kira** desu! Yoroshiku! Feminine form

My name is Kira Kyuuketsuki! Nice to meet you!

Boku wa Uzumaki Naruto desu. Masculine form

My name is Naruto Uzumaki.

Kyuuketsuki (last name; means vampire)

Kira (first name; means 'sun throne' in Russian, 'glitter' in Japanese, 'dark' in Gaelic; derived in the way Death Note's 'Kira' is from)

Side Note: For those of you who have not been fortunate enough to read Death Note (I'm telling you to go read it **now**, it's the best series ever) the name 'Kira' is derived (in this series) from the English word 'killer'.

I'm sleep deprived and walking around in a trance like state...

Please ignore my rambling and write a review!


	4. Chapter 4 Edited

The Scent of Blood Chapter 4

Hehe. Finally an update. *ducks* sorry, but I've lost interest in Naruto as I drew inspiration from the latest chapters and the recent ones have not been helpful at all. I'm not sure about removing the 'HIATUS' tag off this story yet because I haven't written any new chapters... Some of you may have seen this chapter before; it's been edited alot so you may want to re-read it. The edited chapter 5 will be out in a few days, so stay tuned!

Thanks to all the people that left reviews, I'm really only still here for you guys and my muse ^_^

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Naruto, Kira K. is mine and so is most of the plotline

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Morning rose for him like it always had. The gray rays came through the patched blue curtains. His tired eyes met the clock on the opposite wall. _6 o'clock_. It was time for the day to begin.

He always woke up early, the day after market day. Market day was when all the food went on sale. The day _after_ day market day was when all the food left over that was unfit for even rock-bottom prices was thrown out. At least that's what the shopkeepers use to do. After they had discovered the he was getting food by placing transparent nets inside bin, they stopped and instead put the mostly rotten food in the back and when he came, sold it to him for the normal (not on sale price) and sometimes they even added to the price. However, this 'deal' was only open before the markets actually opened to the general public. If he wasn't there before 6:30am, they gave the food to the street animals; the stray dogs, the stray cats and the vultures. He had to move quickly if he wanted to get to the other end of Konoha. And if he wanted some fresh produce to add to his diet of instant cup ramen.

He sighed and ran out of his apartment. He had never bothered to lock the door until after discovering a locked door was just an excuse for a broken window or even a smashed door, which the landlord would always make him pay. He was really thankful for the old man Hokage, who probably had no idea how thankful he was for the financial help. At first the Hokage had signed guardianship over to a local orphanage. Put bluntly, it hadn't worked out very well.

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She woke up early and met her stone faced father in their dojo. It was the same as always. Training with him and learning to examine his moves; this came to her naturally, because ninja blood flowed through her veins. With her eyes, she could analyze her father's moves, her father had the same eyes as her, but she had always felt that her eyes were a little different, a little strange. _Block. Block. Duck. Kick. Turn. Punch._ Her father had narrowly missed that punch. For a second, surprise flickered across his face, then, it was disapproving again. She needed to improve. She needed to get better. _For her father._ So that she could be a _good child. _She turned, ducked and tried to kick his legs out. She missed. The strange thing was, she had expected herself to miss, and it was to create an opportunity to aim at his stomach.

Suddenly, she was being pulled into that space again. She was standing in a black void, watching the events take place. _She saw herself and her father. _She had just attempted to kick his legs out and as he jumped to avoid her swipe, she mustered her strength into her legs and supported her hand. _Her hand made contact just below her father's rib cage. _With a little too much force. _Blood. She had attacked her father with so much force that he coughed up blood all over the closest person. _Her. Her young face paled, her childish mind froze as her father collapsed in front of her. While watching herself in the vision freeze, and knowing she could do nothing, her eyes began to blur. She began to feel a little sick, but before she could, her chest tightened and she was being pulled out of the black void and into reality again.

No time had passed in the _real world. _For which she was glad. At current, she was in the process of making contact with the space below her father's chest. _The vision._ She wanted to please her father, but she didn't want to hurt him seriously. _For her father. I want to be a good child. _In the seconds she had left, she twisted her foot. This, sent the weight behind her fist spiraling out of control and resulted in her, on the wooden dojo floor, with a twisted ankle and her fist, somewhat lodged into the floorboards. Her father had noticed her pain. He had noticed the loss of the power over over her striking hand, but he hadn't notice her flinch a millisecond before her foot pivoted. It was the same as always. He had noticed her faults, her errors and never bothered to wonder why she couldn't even execute the simplest of moves properly. His face was set in a grim line. He shook his head and called for a medic nin. While she was being carried away on a white canvas stretcher, her father sighed with disappointment and disapproval. He had not noticed that his injured daughter had heard his sigh. It seemed as if he would never realize anything. While her body was on the stretcher, being racked with pain, her heart ached. She was wondering how long she could do this for. At this rate, she was never going to reach her full potential. And she knew that she had to. Like all other shinobi, it was an internal, hereditary drive passed on from generation to generation that forced them to strive to be strong and gather the strength, power and courage to protect their comrades. But she didn't want to hurt her father. She didn't want to utilize her eyes to their full potential. She didn't want to always be pulled into the void just as she was going to succeed. Sometimes, she wished she had been born blind. To be able to not see would have been much, much better.

While the young girl's mind raged battle within its confinements, a pair of eyes noticed her internal struggle. That pair of eyes had noticed her flinch, had noticed the change on her faced when she came out of the void. An intense yellow eye and a misty blue one.

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Yes, it's a very short chapter... I told you I edited it didn't I? (_) Next one's up soon. I hope someone's still reading this. Please leave a review!!!


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